The King's health had been manifestly declining for a considerable time before his death; his son was a little boy; there was no statesman left of the calibre of Wolsey or of Cromwell. It was therefore impossible but that speculation and intrigue should have been rife as to the hands into which power was likely to fall during the approaching minority. Two parties had existed for years in Henry's Council, between whom his hand had held the balance. It remained to be seen how it would adjust itself when that hand was withdrawn. The Act of Six Articles, and the persecution which followed it, had marked the extreme point of the reaction which had been induced in Henry's mind, partly at least by the Pilgrimage of Grace. As time went on and Henry's health became weaker, the influence of Katherine Parr and of the Seymours seems to have gradually increased; and though he still maintained his enforced religious truce, the King became gradually less severe in his treatment of heretics, and rumours went about of an intended further religious reform. Still, up to within a very few months of Henry's death, it might well have seemed that the reactionary party in the Council had the better chance of success. In the main it consisted of the nobles of 'the old blood,' headed by the Duke of Norfolk and his son Lord Surrey, together with Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Lord Wriothesley, the Chancellor, who, though himself one of the new nobles, seems to have adhered to the Catholic party. Their opponents consisted mostly of the nobles of 'the new blood '—i.e. the Seymours, Lord Parr, Lord Lisle, Lord Russell, and others: men who had risen from positions of comparative obscurity had been ennobled by Henry himself, and grown rich upon the spoils of the
